The one where I say 'cock' in the correct context

I woke up at 4 this morning but I feel really good about it. My lights were out by 11, so I'd already slept decently, and I really needed to pee. As a general rule sacrificing sleep to not rupture internally is okay. It might have been nice to doze off more quickly after awakening, but the 2 hours I lay awake were excellent. They featured a comic book,

peanut butter on a rice cake,

Note: a rice cake was unavailable at the time of the photo shoot

a glass of milk,

and relaxed amusement with my current lot in life.

Then, as a bonus, when I slept again I had a dream featuring Toon and a shower.

Sexy time?

All the time.

Today at work was more of yesterday. Lots of wandering and learning about the buildings. I got to see the inside of the mill finally and it is freaking amazing. They don't have a mill interpreter right now due to cutbacks - the miller is currently the doctor and the cabinet maker once in a while - so the giant cogs and gears are motionless. But when they put that big ol' wheel back to spinning I'll never leave!

Gonna grind my grain so good.

I also met some new animals. We have some new Light Bramah fowl. That's one to the right. Imagine him, but even more handsome, strutting slowly across the barnyard with his feathered feet rustling on each stomp. That's what our cock looked like, and there were also some really pretty hens.

For him.

Not me.

I also met Jake and Ross, a Percheron and Clydesdale respectively (horses for the uninitiated), some Toulouse geese (I wish there had been only one) and their Embden cousins. Yesterday it was Hereford cattle and Leicester sheep along with some fancy-pants pigs whose breed I didn't catch.

We're all about the rare and heritage breeds at BCPV.

We're also all about dog powered butter churns. Or at least the example we have attached to one of the village homes. A quick interweb search tells me such things were not wholly uncommon, but unlike most of the pictures I'm finding ours looks more like a giant enclosed hamster wheel. The dog runs inside and his or her power is transferred to the butter barrel by way of a belt.

In the olden times even the butter was better.

brain election

I think my brain tries to predict the future.

I went to bed early last night, needing to be up for the St. Paul by-election. I took a while to doze off (surprise!), but when I did it was time for my brain to play Predict Tomorrow's Events, a fantastic game with millions in prizes.

My brain does this a lot. Often when I have to be up early, rather than wait for the alarm, I will wake up repeatedly from 4 or so on. The only reason I know what my brain is playing is because all this waking and sleeping lets me remember what I was dreaming.

Here is a run down of what my brain thought would happen today.

-I would be working a poll set-up in an old church

-I would spend most of my time in one of the pews looking through my backpack for distractions

-someone would be training us in the intricacies of electioneering (no one would listen to the drone)

-I would never see any actual voters

-eventually the wedding that was also booked for the church today (obviously) would start

-I would need to move myself to the back of the church so as not to be in the way (by-elections aren't that important)

-when the minister asks if anyone had anything to say one of the bridal party would speak. She thought the groom was a bit emotionally mean sometimes

-the bride wouldn't react in any way

-the groom would make a comical shrug and gesture with his arms, saying Me? I'm the best!

Good try brain, I said, but it's 6:37 and I'm getting up. No prizes today, but as thanks for playing please accept breakfast.

In reality, I biked up to Bathurst and St.Clair, getting nice and sweaty, then sat in a really warm room (the one I had training in before) for about an hour listening to a lady drone about what the DRO and the IA and the RO and the PC would be doing. There were a lot of us there and most of the people had apparently worked an election or two before.

I made a decision (I'm getting better at that, maybe I'll write a post about it!) to leave. If I stayed it would be at least until 1230 and if I was actually sent to a poll I'd be working until

9 PM.

I have a job starting next week and they seemed to have enough people to fill any voids, so I claimed sickness and left.

I do have a sore throat and a runny nose, so it wasn't even a lie. Also, I did something to me knee last night and if there's one thing that can ruin an election it's a gammy knee (see: 1842 election in Canada West between Francis and Jenkins) so my departure was for the best.

And now I get to have coffee with Toon!

fitful nights

What a thoroughly unrestful night of sleep. Didn't descend for the longest time, then it was the 20 minutes of shut eye dance where I kept waking unnecessarily every few minutes.

The last 2 hours of spastic sleep were dream infested.

I was on the coast of France for the day, visiting from elsewhere.

I lost my bike in the surf as the tide rolled in (or was it stolen?).

Why the hell would I park my bike on the tide line?

I remember being very worried about my lock rusting.

Oh yes! The pope was in town for a visit. He paraded into a stadium that materialized on the beach, driving right past me. When he reached the far end he had his head chopped off with a toy light sabre. It was some sort of hilarious ruse and most of the stadium seemed in on it, shouting something in unison after the event. Even those that didn't shout seemed to take the incident quite well, going from awe that they were in the pope's presence to acceptance that the funny little man in white was a puppet with a head flying over the pope- mobile.

The more I think on this the more I remember. I saw a video of the exact incident moments before it occurred. People's movements were choreographed and they joined the procession as the pope passed, making sure the stadium was balanced for a big North-Koreanesque huzzah for our little trick! after the decapitation.

But then the show was over, the stadium it took place in disappeared, my bike was still missing, and the last train home long gone. Stuck for the night, I chatted - in French! - with a local at a restaurant. Before long he had invited me to a flat, I assumed his, where I watched TV while he brushed his teeth and left.

Turns out he was tricking me into staying at a home which belonged to another. I found this out when he called drunkenly from a party. I didn't answer a phone, just saw him calling from the party. Like in a movie.

I got out of the place before anyone showed up. My English language movie on the TV, whatever it was, had run its course anyway.

And then as I strolled back for one last look in the waves for my bike, I bumped into some Queen's engineers in school sweaters who were in the town on exchange. I think I was about to ask for a floor to sleep on when the wakeful me decided a few more useless chunks of sleep just wasn't going to cut it.

So just before sleep I awoke to get on with my day.

Here goes.